Our Mill-End House

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For most wood-burning homes in these parts, "firewood" means mill ends . . . scraps of waste lumber from our area's many sawmills. When the mill has finished grading and drying the various cuts of timber, they're sawed to standard finished lengths. There's always a nickel's worth of wood left over: 21-inch 2 X 4's, 24-inch 2 X 6's, maybe 18-inch 2 X 8's and so on. These bits are dumped in a heap and are usually available to any picker who's willing to go in and stock up. They're all either kiln-dried or air-dried, and make great fuel.

Tom's father-in-law had found that mill ends also make a great woodshed, and in record time. The old gentleman had built the open-ended shelter in just one week. He simply laid one 2 X 4 beside another, in line like bricks . . . first one row, then another, nailing the courses together as he progressed.

Lights flashed and bells rang! George's enthusiasm fairly leaped off the pages of his letters as he wrote of his plans for a mill-end house. Support beams could be made by laminating 2 X 10's or 2 X 12's to the desired depth. The walls would be either four or six inches thick, depending on whether we decided to build with 2 X 4's or 2 X 6's (see Figs. 1A and 1B). We later settled on 2 X 4's since they were by far the most numerous. Because the structure would be self-supporting, style and size were limited only by imagination and the willingness to pound nails and lay wooden "bricks".

George's next letter contained a rough sketch of the proposed floor plan (nothing too outlandish . . . at that point we needed square footage more than cleverness). The house was to be constructed in modules one and a half stories high. The first unit would be the kitchen, with a bedroom upstairs. The next would contain a living area and another bedroom. Last would come a garage with a third bedroom above and food storage below, as dictated by the roll of the land (see the sketch). And—since the mill ends served equally well as interior or exterior walls—there would be no Tinkertoy effect about the finished building.

George's brainstorm meant that we could join him in Washington, roughing it in our 9' X 1 12' tent and the 8' X 10' cabin for a few weeks until the first module was enclosed. All that remained was to sell our house in Colorado, give notice at work, pack and leave. George stocked up on mill ends, stored them at the building site and came home to help with culling out, selling out and loading up.

We arrived in Washington on November 1 . . . just three days before a 12-inch snowfall heralded the wettest November on record for the northeastern corner of the state. Our only vehicle was a 1970 VW bus, which we eventually outfitted with snow tires and chains. Providence smiled, however, and during the next two months—whenever it was really necessary to tote building supplies, food, clothes or whatever up our 2-1/2-mile uphill road—the job got done. The purchase of an old single—ski, double-track, geared-down Ski-Doo increased our mobility.

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